The Race for Three Hundred Thousand – Week 1 report!

The first week of The Race for 300000€ is now over, and it’s time to take a look at what has happened during the first week, what has been the reaction to our campaign, and what are the results, mistakes and successes we’ve had so far.

Just to recap what I did – I set up Iron Sky on 9 different crowd funding platforms out there, and begun the journey to raise 300000€ – a gap in our budget due to bad weather conditions – by using the services available. But more interestingly, I started to do a comparative research on the platforms, attempting to define the ultimate crowd funding platform out there, and share my experiences with filmmakers around the world.

And as a rabbit in the race, our own means (excluding investments), through which we made 2111€ during the same time.

It was clear from the very beginning that setting up the project on multiple platforms isn’t going to be the most effective strategy. It was also quite obvious that 300000€ in 60 days is quite a challenge. But in order to be able to compare services out there, the multiplatform strategy with high goals was the best way to go.

We chose the services through suggestions from our Facebook and Twitter fan pages, and narrowed them down to 10. Unfortunately, one of the services (FansNextDoor) refused to set up Iron Sky to their service, and Kickstarter is using Amazon Payments for their reimbursements, and since we’re not a US company, we were unable to set that up (we have a workaround in plans for that, but we’ll see if that happens…).

Unfortunately, one of the services (Pozible, from Australia), kicked us out of the system because we were not using solely them for crowd funding. This was quite an unexpected move, and does annoy us quite a lot, since we had already raised close to A$700, and had quite big plans for our Australian crowd funding campaign.

Other than these setbacks, all the services have been most helpful. IndieGoGo chose us to be one of the Projects of the Month, Interactor were in close discussions with us planning the strategy, Verkami has been most helpful and even sent out press releases of our involvement to reach Spanish media and StartNext from Germany’s been actively promoting Iron Sky. The collaboration with the platforms has been crucial, in both understanding the possibilities each unique platform offers, and the techniques that making a project interesting on the platform takes. I’ve also realized that multi-platform crowd funding is probably the way to go – but one needs to pick carefully the platforms. Each of them has to offer unique qualities for the supporter, and it seems that locality has a lot of advantages.

Reactions & Things To Come

The reaction from the Iron Sky fans and followers around the world has been positive. People are interested to hear the results and see how the campaign progresses. It’s good to know that no matter if we succeed in our goal or not, the main point for me is to research the platforms and hopefully write an article and publish it after we’re done with our campaign, so that filmmakers out there know what services are out there, and how they can take advantage of them.

The Race continues. We’re hoping to get things rolling faster as we move forward. I hope you’ll stick around, and if there’s something you’d be interested to hear, or would like us to look into, or just wish to comment the whole process, do let me know – drop an email to timo at ironsky dot net, or a comment down here.

Next update coming next Monday. Until then, take it easy and see you around!

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Bad move of (im)Pozible. Crowdfunding stands for independence and liberty, not for ”Well, we’re wiseacres who decide what’s YOUR project involved in outside our platform”
It’s like Black&Decker prohibiting me to use a DeWalt saw along with a product of theirs in MY DIY project.

What I wanna say with this is that crowdfunding platforms are just tools. And reading that the other platforms you use don’t have problems that you went multi-platform means to me that Pozible has yet to find their place.

Couldn’t agree more with you, Jaap. To see a crowdfunding – or -sourcing, for that matter -platform as something else than an elaborate social tool is giving wrong kind of credit to the whole matter at hands. The platform is as good and as interesting as the projects in it, not the other way around. It’s like me saying that you can’t use Google Docs if you’re using Wreckamovie, because both can be used collaboratively… Really stupid move, Pozible, and I’m about to write a bit more on that as soon as I clarify few things from Pozible’s side…

Honestly I m not quiet sure about that, u r apparently using these crowdfunding platforms in the way they are not designed to be. A lot of them works on a all or nothing funding model, like kickstater.

I can understand they are getting concerned about it since the way u do it looks like spam to the users.

I think your set of rewards could be organized differently for better results.

The “public thank-you” is too expensive — I’d gladly pledge $5 or $10 for that, but for $35, I want a physical or tangible reward, not just a thank-you. Let people pledge a tiny amount, if they want. Kickstarter recommends setting a minimum pledge of $1, for precisely this reason.

And I’d gladly pledge $35 (or even a bit more) for a DVD of the movie (even for a non-collector’s edition DVD), but the only option for getting a DVD of any kind is bundled with a ticket to the premiere, which I’m less interested in, and costs $400, which is way out of my price range. Let people pre-order a DVD if that’s all they want, or just tickets to the premiere, if that’s all they want.

i agree, a thank you for $35 is a bit much. $5 for a thank you is fine, doing your bit to help, but $35 at least deserves a reward, maybe not even a dvd if thats to much. Maybe
a action figure or something. Oh, by the way, why dont you make iron sky paintball helmets and mayb guns!

as an actual german guy, I am fascinated by your movie. I WANT to see it, no matter when.

However, I had another Idea for extended Fundraising: the Theme Song of Iron Sky is just totally awesome. Whoever did it, dare him to make a 2-3min long Radio Edit of this song and SELL IT! With a little bit of Promotion, this song could get a massive worldwide success. I had this idea while first listening to the song, actually. It gave me huge creeps.

If you should have any problems, finding a label to release it on, I’d gladly help you on that one.
Good Luck!

SEOs pay a lot money to get a backlink from a good page like starwreck.com. maybe you should add a package which includes a mention (whith backlink)on this blog. I think you could price this with 150-200€.

I agree with Philipp concerning the music! Maybe you have more plans to release the tracks later, but both the songs you use for the trailers are amazing. I would totally drop some dollar for those tracks!

T-shirt or DVD pre-order incentives are good ideas concerning the $/€ 30-40 amount.

It sounds like some pre-premiere merchandising should be hitting online stores about now… and they aren´t. I can´t believe with the amount of visual design talent you guys have, you haven´t yet come up with some stuff to sell.

Sites like Jinx.com could potentially carry that kit, and the demographic seems about right.

In 2005 a group of young filmmakers released Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. Now they're working on Iron Sky, one of the most ambitious Finnish film projects ever. These are their stories.